Mobile daters

Banksy shows that going on a Tinder date isn't ever as fun as just swiping.

Digital dating: more trips and traps to fall into than ever before. And meaning that there's more to analyse. Which is difficult for a literature graduate. I analysed a glove for 10,000 words.

So when Carrie gets a message from Big on her answering machine, Miranda comes over and they analyse it together. Oh what a simple time it was. Nowadays you can forget the confusing voicemails, and trade them for contextless emojis, passive-aggressive or cryptic tweets, "last seen at" bizarre hours, and Snapchat politics - to name a few.

When it comes to dating and technology, there are all these new things we can do and worry about. It also means it can speed up the process to finding out whether they're worth precious data, or are just a wi-fi hookup.

The pre-date stalk

It does give us the option to find out a bit more about each other before the date though. Nothing comforts me more than taking the shock factor out of a blind date. However, this can backfire. My last date told me that he knew which university halls I lived I because he'd seen my old cover photos. Online stalking is accepted. Talking about online stalking is not.

Ignored: on several different platforms

Then there's the problem of actually talking online. Great for an initial ego-boost. Bad when you know they've been online and ignored you. Whether it's iMessage, WhatsApp, Facebook or something more 'specalised', the go-to way to break something off is a kind of brutality you shouldn't waste any time analysing.

Tinder terror

The ultimate taster buffet of local men. Swipe at your peril. And don't forget the danger of running into your ex on there. Big moral dilemma: swipe right and stroll back into the lions den, swipe left and pretend it never happened or (secret option number three) cry a river to throw your phone into. Thumbs up emoji.

Then come the actual horror stories. Get this, when you're ready to get engaged, and receive a phone call to tell you that your boyfriend has been "spotted" on Tinder. Active one girlfriend ago.

What's next? LinkedIn for dating? Connect with a guy your friend has friendzoned, endorse previous dates for the ability to text back within an hour, or even write a recommendation for your ex "great in bed, but far too liberal with that skill".

Maybe it would be easier to just replay a voicemail until the machine's lost its voice. But the truth is, I like being the ignorer, I'm all about swiping, and emojis are my favourite mode of communication. And it's not that social media makes your date more of a douchbag, it just means you can find out a lot sooner.

Image credit: http://bit.ly/1CFALF2

Orange is the same old same old

A potential look into the future for the out-of-work Litchfield actresses...

Spoiler alert. I will be discussing all kinds of things that happen in season three of Orange Is The New Black. If you've not finished it yet stop here or forever hold your peace/don't bitch that I ruined it for you.

'It's good to have on in the background.' Said nobody about Orange Is The New Black ever... Until season three.

I devoured the season in all of three sittings - one of which was an eight hour session. Like most I tore through it with the anticipation of drama, some saucy scenes, and some laughs of course. But not all of these expectations were met...

Backstory bitches

I feel like the only real bit of feedback from seasons one and two that the writers of OITNB heard was "How great are the backstories?!" They obviously took this, and bolted.

Don't get me wrong, some of these backstories are incredible. And make for amazing character insights. Chang, for example, was one of my favourites.

But there are so many that are left unfulfilled and cryptic. Leanne's for example is fantastic, but it doesn't give us any explicit closure as to how she actually ended up inside Litchfield. Why? Come on guys.

Too many characters spoil the show

As humans, we like being told where to focus, and told to root for someone. The problem with this series, is we're not given a 'Team Piper' or 'Team Alex', or even asked to choose between the different cliques like we were before.

Instead we're presented with so many main characters, so many mini-plots, so many little rivalries - we don't have the chance to build up a case for who we like more. So we just don't.

The expansion of backstories, and increased focus on characters which were previously categorised as secondary, means that the main plot-line has definitely taken a hit.

The plot passover

There are some real big things that happen, the big plot moments which could have really driven this series, that are completely glossed over. Dayanara's baby's birth is over within half an episode, Nikki is driven off to the Maximum security unit very unceremoniously, Piper and Alex's break up is quaintly handled, and Bennet's exit was so brief I was left thinking I'd missed an episode out entirely.

These big things happen in the main storyline that could've been made so much more out of. I want to see Daya grieiving for her child, I wanted to see Red and Morello form an alliance over Nikki's removal, I want to know what on earth got into Bennet, and I wanted to see Alex tear Piper to shreds.

But no. Apparently they all just get on with life in prison now. Good for them. But boring for TV.

Also, side note - I guarantee that next season will include a lesbian prison wedding after yesterday. Go America.

Ultimately, this show is still doing what it set out to do. It's still breaking all kinds of assumptions with a female community which is ironically defying all of the fair sex boundaries. But it's disappointing to see that the writers think that the show can continue on this alone. Without a decent plot-line, OITNB is going to lose it's credibility and permanently fall into the "it's alright to have in the background" realm of TV. A real shame for a show which is doing so much for women in terms of challenging stereotypes.

Oh and, Ruby Rose just reminds me of a young Angelina Jolie. I like her accent and I hope she's back for the next season, because she's a good actress. That's all I have to say on that.

Love's not a competition(?)

So you're doing better in your love life than your ex. Want a medal?

Why is it that when relationships break down, everything between you both is suddenly a race? It's all who can get over who first, who can get a date first, who can get laid first, ultimately, who can reach their happily ever after first.

It's like a game of anything you can do I can do better. Or anyone. Or any where.

The annoying thing is that none of the, now competitive, points were ever anything to worry about when you were together. Going on a holiday without the other? Not a problem. More friends than the other? Who cares. Better job? So what.

When you're a couple none of this stuff matters because you're competing together. You're in the 'couples only' three-legged race - singles on the bench. These hurdles include: moving in together, marriage, babies. It's a long race. And not many finish it.

At least in the singles race the only way you can go is forward. The challenges are still brutal though: who looks better post-breakup? who had the best holiday? Instagrams with the most likes win.

And the worst thing that can happen in the singles olympics is watching an ex-partner defect to the three-legged competition.

All this is happily fostered in the breeding ground of hate that is social media bragging. If it wasn't for Facebook/Snapchat/Instagram, would we even know anything about the other's life? Would we care half as much? Can you honestly say you've not scrolled through a home-feed with just a little bit of terror that you might come across a humble-brag announcing something you were not emotionally prepared to see?

As a perpetual loser in this competition I have to ask, does it really feel that good to be 'winning'? Even if you are ahead in the race, or - worse - if you've upgraded to the three-legger, does it mean you're at peace with everything? Bear in mind - you are still running.

Personally, I'm all for dropping out of the race entirely. I'm not a very good runner anyway, and if I need to keep fit, I've got emotional baggage to lift.

Anyway, here are some of Hayley Williams' dulcet tones. Kaiser Chiefs, you know the struggle.

No man's land, or, 2015.

Six months into 2015 and, so far, four breakups. Rest in peace relationships.

In school there was a new breakup every other day, but now our dating lives have reached the chronological point that they're loaded with life changing promises. Moving across the country? Marriage and babies? Putting petrol in the car? So when people break up, it's not just a boyfriend that's gone - it's your whole future.

This isn't just a quick cry in the girls loos, this a trip to the medical tent in an all out war-zone. 2015 is a minefield and we're walking through it terrified about who's going to get blown to pieces next. First a friend, then yourself, then a family member. Boom, boom, boom.

Now I know why it's called no man's land.

The worst thing is. I'm actually trying to guess which one it'll be next. I don't want to put money on it but I do have a few ideas...

Then again, is it this year? Or is it me?

Do I put out a worldwide alert? "Red warning: don't come into contact with me if you like your relationship". I feel like I need to warn all of my happily coupled friends, like this is contagious - look out kids, it could be you next!

Or is it the curse of the 'twentysomething'? Is the early twenties the time that we all cut our losses and run? Big decision time: are you in or out? It's like Dragon's Den, the money's dried up, we're turning down your investment - everyone's out.

The silver linings to this shitstorm year of a cloud: more single girls to cry with, to drink wine with, to pick you up from strangers homes at stranger hours of night, and to comfort eat McDonalds with.

So maybe 2015 isn't the year of the breakup, but the year war veterans unite, chuck down a few beers and appreciate that we survived.

Graduates: the real world is coming

Lena Dunham writes in her debut novel "Upon graduation I had felt a heavy sense of doom, a sense that nothing would ever be simple again." Graduated one whole year, my first bit of advice to newborn graduates would be: don't set your expectations too high.

Congratulations! You're graduated! You're free! No more late nights finishing essays in a library. No more minus sign next to your bank account. No more annoying housemates. Right?

Even on a decent 'graduate' wage, you'll still need your overdraft

If you try living a Taylor Swift lifestyle on a minimum wage budget, it'll bite you in the ass. Just because you're earning, doesn't mean you can buy everything.

This sucks, and is a lesson to be learnt the hard way. Luckily most banks are forgiving creatures and let you keep the interest free overdraft for a little bit longer.

No more late nights. Full stop.

The "real world" is made up of two kinds of people: morning people, and people who suffer. If you're part of the latter category, to save yourself from a life behind bars for killing the person who wouldn't stop talking before 9am, try adjusting to early(ier) nights.

It sucks, but between those and caffeine, you might not kill anyone.

You can pick your friends, you can't pick your housemates

The chances are you're going to end up in one of two scenarios: living with (new) housemates, or with your parents.

New housemates come with a whole new bunch of issues to deal with. Perhaps they're different ages, earn different salaries, work out at 6am or party hard until 4am? Or, they could be your next best friend (or even boyfriend?!) disguised as the bill keeper.

But living with your parents presents a political minefield. You left the house as a post-pubescent 18 year old. You're coming back as a slightly broken adult. Try integrating now. Both options, potentially, suck.

Graduated one year and what have we learned? Nothing really changes. Three years of bad habits can take more than one year to break. And it kind of sucks, but this is the real world we were all warned about. So, newborn graduates, suck it up, and learn to love it.

"I just believe in parties.” ― Samantha Jones

Watching a couple dance my friend looked on with total belief in true love, and jealousy in his eyes, I comfortingly expressed my heretic belief: "They'll probably break up."

It's safe to say my belief in things has hit a new low. I believed I could get a first in my English Literature degree, I believed I would be the last sibling to get married and have kids, and I believed that my TV would hold out just a few more years.

Apparently, belief doesn't mean it'll happen.

But I haven't stopped believing in some stuff. In this case, HBO. I'm currently rewatching the entire Sex and the City TV series.

Why? Because I need to press a reset button on my dating life. I pulled out of dating after I realised that I didn't believe in it any more. After a bad break up and some trial dates, I decided I was out.

I didn't like it the first time round, but now I've got "relationship experience" under my belt it's supposed to be easier? Sure, it should be. But you know, once bitten, twice as reluctant to throw yourself to the lions.

So I thought, I could take Carrie's latter option, or find a way to restore my beliefs. Perhaps I would be born again if I worked my way through every possible scenario. I thought, if Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda can all go through it first - and survive - then I should be fine. Right?

Now, after significant research, we can deduce dating status into SATC phases. And, according to Charlotte, I'm in the beginning of Season 2 phase.

"It takes half the total time you went out with someone to get over them" - Season 2, Episode 1.

This is nice to know, but if can blitz a series in a week, can these next three months also hurry up? After the post-Big phase, is the slutty Carrie phase (we can skip that) because then comes the Season 3 phase: the Aidan phase. Hail Mary.

So I might not believe that I'll pay off my student loan some day, or that love lasts forever, or that TVs are for life, but I do believe in Carrie Bradshaw. And that there'll be a hot furniture designer waiting for me next season...

Days Are Gone, but girl power is here to stay

Yes, I'm talking about an album that's two years old. There's a reason for it. Let me get to that.

"The Haim sisters are those fabulous wispy girls who hang round with Taylor Swift on a speedboat right? They look gorgeous, but their music isn't for me."

Nobody had ever asked me why it wasn't for me. I didn't know. Aside from the radio I hadn't given it a real chance.

Then I saw their music videos. They have choreographed dancing - circa the Spice Girls. Now I'm converted.



Haim are like Lena Dunham's Girls for the ears. Their music is blunt, emotional and there's a shit load of swearing.

The truth is I was thrown by their image. They remind me of this girl I went to school with who is so gorgeous she could be the princess of a fictional Middle Eastern country. So I thought they were a bit out of my reach.

What would three long haired brunettes have in common with a bobbed blonde anyway? Apparently a lot.

Take My Song 5 for example. These girls are pissed - they experience everything us normal people do. I thought their songs were about beautiful goddess-esque things I couldn't understand, but no. Listen to their lyrics, 'Days Are Gone' is about being in love, breaking up, and all at the wrong moments. It's about wanting to go back or to run away or to do things you shouldn't when faced with desires vs reality. See Go Slow, Running When You Call My Name, The Wire, etc - actually, see tracks 1-11.

Let's also appreciate that, like girl bands before them, they're moving us forward. Predecessors like The Bangles, Destiny's Child and the Spice Girls have paved the way for this girl band. Haim are following in their footsteps with impeccable style, cultural awareness and an undeniable femininity.

I feel like they are the evolution of the girl band in my lifetime. We've come a long way from the tight sequin Union Jack dresses. It's like we're in the hipster years, where alternative style meets pop culture to create a refreshing sound, with enough teenage-moodiness, dance beats and relatable lyrics to appeal to a twenty-something looking for a female community to get her through the trials and tribulations of becoming a grown up.

And Haim have the longest combined hair of any band right now - and play all their own instruments. Bad. Ass.

Bootea: the party's over

After getting sucked in by clever Instagram marketing, before and after photos, and a colour scheme reminiscent of the bedroom I grew up in, I decided to try the Bootea 14 day Teadox.

January is the time for detoxing, apparently. And now, we're lucky enough to have enough products aimed at us suckers to kick our ass, or metabolism, into gear.

But I had a lot of questions that I wish someone had answered for me before I started throwing the tea party.

How does it taste?

The day one is isn't great, the night one is worse. Don't brew it for too long, and keep your cups small. If you still have to pinch your nose and down it, it's probably not your, er, cup of tea.
✌ ✌ 

Did it help you lose weight?

Sometimes people claim that they experience a laxative effect - which is probably the cause of any weight loss. Did it cause a laxative effect for me? Only once. And it caused me to waddle out of the office at such a high speed it was like Pingu trying to win a 100m sprint.

So no, it didn't help me lose any weight. It gives you a caffeinated kick start in the morning which could be an incentive to hit the gym, while the night tea is like a guilt-free sleeping pill. It gives you such fantastic sleep you might actually have the energy to go to the gym.

✌ 

Would you recommend it?

I'm not very good at committing to anything two teas a day, so I wasn't the strictest specimen. So my results might be off and you might have to take them with a pinch of sugar.

Ultimately, I like to think the point of Bootea - apart from to pray on body insecurities - is to teach you about what tea can do for you. Since Bootea, I'm a convert to green teas: Clipper, Twinings, pure, or with lemon, mango and lychee, or salted caramel flavour. However, it still tastes like green tea, and if you brew it too long, you'll never drink it.

If you're willing to look beyond the brand, the innovative packaging, and not fall for the "magic of weight loss" messaging, then you might as well just invest in some green tea. They're probably better for you, they come in far nicer flavours and they're definitely kinder on your bank accounts.
✌ ✌ 

Detox conducted in January 2015, Bootea purchased from Holland & Barrett.

Psycho and the City

As part of my horror-binge, amongst documentaries on Jeffrey Dahmer, Aileen Wuornos and countless gore films, I (tried to) read American Psycho. I was not prepared.

Ask yourself what you know about the 1991, 400 page, Bret Easton-Ellis novel. You'd probably answer that it's set in the 80s, that Christian Bale stars in the film adaption, and you could probably guess it's set in New York.

What you won't guess is that some passages will mentally scare.

Easton-Ellis' prose is so good, so accurate, so sterile and smart, that the emotionless actions performed by Patrick Bateman - the 'American psycho' - are terrifying. I'm not sure if an e-reader would survive in the freezer circa Joey but I was close to finding out.

The truth is I've never been so nervous reading anything in public. It's not just the graphic pornographic descriptions, it's the violence. Horror and gore don't quite cut it. Bateman's actions are beyond shocking. And make the reader realise quite how desensitised they've become to the term "psycho".

Which is why it took me the best part of two months to read. The sheer intensity was something you can't be prepared for. Don't get me wrong, I like horror films, but generally they take up only two hours of your life, and you don't often watch them alone. The pages upon pages of torture are more than difficult to read, making you think: Perhaps if I stop reading these horrible things will keep happening?

Bateman's treatment of women is beyond vulgar. He's your typical self-obsessed 'yuppie', ignoring them, thinking he's better, treating them badly in the regular way. And then it gets worse. He drugs them, tortures them, and murders them. At one point he bites off a body part I wasn't aware could be bitten off.

But it's not just women. It's the homeless of New York, the non-white cab drivers, anyone who isn't a white American male. Some of the abuse he gives to the homeless characters is eye-watering. And the stereotype is only reinforced through his idolisation of Donald Trump and essays on Phil Collins.

It's not often I read a well-written book that I wouldn't recommend. But unless you're prepared for some serious non-linear porn and brutality - interspersed with essays on the hits of Genesis and Madonna - then, go for it.

Gilligan's desert: barren of women

Spoiler alert, as we take a look at the women - or lack thereof - in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul.

It's a man's world. Well, it certainly is with Netflix's greatest hits so far.

Let's take a look at the IMDB summary pages for the cast of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul (respectively) and play 'Spot the Women':

Breaking Bad series cast

Better Call Saul series cast

Women make up 18.75% of these screenshots: out of 16 lead characters, only three are female.

Vince Gilligan, then, does not believe the genres of crime and drama, and subject matter including law and a meth-empire, are feminine topics.

But if you scrap that and look at the women that we do have, we would see only dependent figures. Junkies, girlfriends, wives.

Marie Schrader is the perfect example of this. She's dependent on her family - her husband Hank and her sister Skyler for companionship - and on her own addictions: shoplifting, therapy. As an independent character, she doesn't contribute much to the plot, aside from being Skyler's sister.

And look at Jesse's trail of girlfriends, either dependent on drugs or depended on by their children.

Skyler White, long-suffering wife of her self-absorbed, bitter husband, is the only female who really bites back. The power struggle between Walter and Skyler is something that really needs to be examined in greater detail, but ultimately breaks down to this: Skyler still loses.

Skyler is silenced by Walt, overpowered, beaten down. And in the end, she acts on instinct to save herself and her children. We learn that in a world where men like Walt rule, nobody wins.

Did Gilligan think twice about this in his more recent series?

Better Call Saul presents another idea of women. Opening with a line about "talking dirty", Kim Wexler is the beauty with a brain. Lawyer extraordinaire, Kim appears in every episode of the prequel, but I struggled to remember her name when asked. Her sexual/intellectual persuasive ability is something we're more used to seeing in a female character. But again she seems to have little affect on the overall plot of the series. And seems to be the only active female character in a desert of men.

So, where are all the women? Probably prepping for the launch of Orange Is The New Black, but hopefully they're all doing something sensible, law-abiding and staying well out of the way of these pricks.